Trump's bad call on the judge in the Trump U case

Donald Trump says, racistly, that Judge Gonzalo Curiel cannot give him a fair hearing in court because he is of Mexican heritage. Specifically, Trump says that the reason Curiel (and presumably all other persons of Mexican heritage) cannot be trusted to give him a fair hearing is because he, Donald Trump, is so tough on the border, since he’s promised to build a wall.

Here is what we are learning about Gonzalo Curiel: I don’t know what kind of judge he is and maybe he really is liberal. I have seen no evidence offered of that other than the fact that he has ruled against Trump and his lawyers, but maybe it is true.

One thing we DO know is that Curiel is kind of a badass, and has done more to actually fight border crime than Donald Trump could ever dream of. Curiel, in fact, was so hated as a prosecutor by the Mexican cartels that they tried to have him assassinated:

For much of a year, Gonzalo P. Curiel, then a federal prosecutor in California, lived officially in hiding.

He hunkered down for a while on a naval base and in other closely guarded locations under the protection of United States marshals. Even his siblings did not know exactly where he was at times.

The reason: In a secretly taped conversation inside a San Diego prison, a man accused of being a gunman for a Mexican drug cartel said that he had received permission from his superiors to have Mr. Curiel assassinated.

How gung ho was Curiel to put cartel members behind bars? He notoriously argued in court that information that was (almost certainly) obtained by torture in Mexico should be admissible in U.S. Courts to help convict these thugs....
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If Trump were not so rich, he would be a terrible client. He is making the work of his lawyers much harder with his attacks on the judge. Trump's contempt could cause serious repercussions in a trial. If Trump had any evidence that Judge Curiel was acting on some political bias, his lawyers could file a motion for recusal which could be appealed. That they have not suggests Trump just sees any adverse ruling as bias. There is a big difference between a disagreement on a point of law or procedure and bias.

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